The Central Bank offered new criteria for qualified investors
The Central Bank formulated new criteria for recognizing investors qualified. In addition to increasing property qualifications, the requirements for profile education, a degree and income are formalized. Lawyers expect the criteria to be accepted in the proposed form, professional participants pay attention to a number of difficulties in their implementation.
Bank of Russia Offered New criteria for recognizing investors qualified. They include both independent and combined conditions. One of the independent criteria is the presence of higher education in specialized disciplines (specialty “Finance and Credit”, the magistracy “Finance and Credit” and “Finance” and academic degrees in the specialties “Finance, Money Contact and Credit” or “Finance”), income and property criterion.
An independent criterion is the average income over the past two years in the amount of at least 20 million rubles. per year.
At the same time, income received from the sale of real estate is not taken into account in order to minimize the risks of recognizing the investor qualified in case of a one -time receipt of a large amount.
The property criterion remains independent, according to which from January 1, 2025, the investor is expected to have assets in the amount of at least 12 million rubles. From January 1, 2026, this threshold will increase to 24 million rubles. (cm. « Kommersant » from January 16).
At the same time, the status of a qualified investor can be obtained by combining higher education (for example, according to the programs « Economics », « World Economy » or other economic specialties) or a degree of candidate / doctor of economic sciences with income, property or investment experience. In this case, the requirements for income and property are reduced to 6 million rubles. per year. However, from January 1, 2026, the property criterion rises to 12 million rubles. per year.
Novella is the recognition of higher education in certain specialties by an independent sufficient basis for recognition by a qualified investor, Tatyana Safonova, senior partner of the consulting company O2Consulting, notes.
She notes that the graduation of the university in a certain specialty “does not yet make the graduate an expert in the selected area”, if this criterion was taken into account in conjunction with other criteria, this would “be more justified”.
New criteria are either added to the previously existing ones, or they are slightly transformed, while without changing their essence, they are noted in the IR “Broker's figure”. “A scientific degree, which is a new criterion, also fits logically into the previously constructed logic of the law, indicating knowledge. Persons who have received the status of a qualified investor until the changes will come in will retain it, ”they note there.
However, brokerage companies pay attention to certain difficulties in using new criteria.
Dmitry Lesnov, Deputy Director General of the Finams Business Business Business, indicates that “quite a lot of new criteria appear and they need to take into account everything correctly, if possible to automate the verification process.
Difficulties with the implementation of all these checks are the main problem. ” Professors will need to somehow check documents on customer education, which can cause difficulties, said Igor Pimonov, director of BCS Investment BCS.
According to the Central Bank, according to the results of 2024, the number of qualified investors in Russia reached 879 thousand people, it increased by almost 20%over the year. The amount of assets on brokerage accounts increased by 45%, to 6.8 trillion rubles. The increase in property qualified by the circle of potential qualified investors sharply narrows, says Sergey Rybakov, chief operating director of Go Invest. Mr. Lesnov believes that due to the innovation, many customers will lose the opportunity to diversify their portfolios.
The proposed amount of income with the Central Bank intends to discuss the score. “It seems excessively high to us,” explained Association President Alexei Timofeev. The Nauphor also wants to discuss with the regulator a “circle of financial instruments, which is caused by the broker, the management and the UK assessment of investors' knowledge, which in the project is limited only by the shares of the Pyths, and some other criteria”. Nevertheless, the proposals of the Central Bank with a high probability will be adopted in the edition in which they are proposed, the lawyer of the Forward Legal Oles Gruzdev believes.
